Yea or nay for Northern Gateway? Federal review panel report coming

VANCOUVER – Following months of hearings, years of debate and dozens of protests, the federal panel reviewing the controversial Northern Gateway pipeline will release its report later today.

Much hangs in the balance.

The $6-billion pipeline that would connect the Alberta oil sands to tankers on British Columbia’s coast bound for the emerging markets of Asia has become the beachhead in the battle between economics and the environment.

If approved, the pipeline will likely be just the first to put billions of dollars into the coffers of Alberta, Ottawa and other provincial governments, not to mention the bank accounts of the proponent, Calgary-based Enbridge (TSX:ENB), and the international companies with a stake in the project.

“I would guess that in the early planning stages… they thought these were slam-dunks,” Marc Lee, an analyst at the left-leaning Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, says of Northern Gateway, Keystone XL and other pipeline projects now facing staunch opposition.

So, what went wrong? What didn’t.

The pipeline was always going to face an uphill battle west of the Rockies, in the province where the environmental movement was bolstered by the decades-old “War in the Woods” against old-growth logging.

Enbridge and the oil patch drastically underestimated the power of Green Corp., the older, wiser and better-funded modern version of the tye-dyed denizens who were arrested trying to save trees in the 1990s. Flush with cash from green philanthropists largely from south of the border, groups like Forest Ethics Advocacy, the Dogwood Initiative and Rising Tides have mounted a relentless campaign in Canada and abroad.

“Now, we could potentially see another ‘war in the woods’ over this pipeline,” Lee says.

Growing concern over climate change has been a factor.

Northern Gateway and other pipeline projects — the Keystone XL to the U.S. Gulf Coast, the reversal of Enbridge’s Line 9 through Ontario and Quebec, and Kinder Morgan’s proposed expansion of its Trans Mountain line to Metro Vancouver — mean production in the Alberta oil sands could as much as triple by 2035 and the greenhouse gases it emits along with it.

But while the global concern over greenhouse gas emissions may have spurred funding, protests in B.C. have been more of the grassroots, not-in-my-ocean variety.

There are also concerns that the heavy, molasses-like diluted bitumen coming from the oil sands is more corrosive and difficult to clean up in the event of a spill.

But perhaps the toughest hurdle for the project has been the simmering tension between B.C. First Nations and the federal government.

Unlike the rest of Canada, most First Nations in the westernmost province never signed treaties with the Crown. Decades of treaty negotiations have largely gone nowhere and aboriginal rights have been left to the courts.

Before Enbridge ever filed its application for the pipeline, Ottawa made the fateful decision to let the joint review of the National Energy Board and Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency stand for its duty to consult with First Nations.

“The federal government would not support a process for aboriginal consu